


To the end

by Querulousgawks



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Bickering, Family Drama, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Series, Siblings, references to domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 06:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2457782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duncan and Lilly recover from the limo party.</p><p>He could <em>feel</em> her staring down at him. "You're so pathetic," she sighed, and added thoughtfully, "if only Dad’s tubes had stayed tied.”<br/>“I think girls have the tubes, Lil."<br/>“Girls have the tubes, Duncan, really? If that’s your knowledge of women’s bodies, I’m rescuing Veronica stat.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the end

Once the screaming was over, they slumped together on the living room couch and compared punishments. Lilly lost the car keys for a week, and Duncan’s Xbox was confiscated. “Right, like you can’t just play it at Logan’s,” she groused. Duncan nodded, knowing it was the car, and their mother's lecture on 'attention-seeking', that were really bothering her. Trapped or talked down to: it was a tossup which one Lilly hated more.

“Not if you can’t drive me over there. He’ll have to break us both out,” he reminded her. She recovered enough to give him an incredulous look.

“Please. Why would he come get you when he could be rescuing me?”

“You can’t work a controller for shit?” he offered, and caught a flicker of a smile before she shoved him off the couch.

“I’m pretty good with his  _joystick_ ,” she returned triumphantly and damn it, even he should have seen that coming. He cringed anyway, and when that didn’t seem to express his disgust enough, kept going right into the fetal position.

“Eeugh. I don’t need to hear about that, ok? I neverneed to hear it,” he muttered, curled up eye level with one clawed foot of the coffee table. Not a perspective he'd had before. "Hey, have you ever looked at these? I don't think there's actually an animal with feet like this."

He could _feel_ her staring down at him. "You're so pathetic," she sighed, and added thoughtfully, "if only Dad’s tubes had stayed tied.” 

“I think girls have the tubes, Lil.”

“ _Girls have the tubes,_ Duncan, really? If that’s your knowledge of women’s bodies I’m rescuing Veronica  _stat_.”

At the thought of Veronica he uncurled, propping himself up against the coffee table to tip his head back and smile at the ceiling. He hoped she didn't get in too much trouble. She had looked worried, but not regretful, as she’d turned away to get in her dad’s car.

Lillie’s snort cut into his reverie. “ _So_ pathetic,” she repeated, and he straightened to glare at her.

Even slouching on the sofa with a hangover, Lilly was graceful; one dress strap fell artfully down her arm, and she was eyeing herself in the mirror across the room, turning her head for some unseen photographer. He was working on a half-hearted crack about paparazzi when he caught sight of the bruises, three blurring ovals in a neat line just along her bared shoulder.

Right. His first thought, every time, was,  _I don’t remember,_  before reason kicked in and reminded him that was  _how it worked, moron_. But he’d been thinking that they weren’t happening as much, anymore.  _Like you’d even know._

He nudged her ankle with his toe. “Quit posing; your audience is out dry cleaning his tuxedo.” It was even weaker than the one he’d started with, but hey - the banter wasn’t his job, he was the straight man, they had a system. She huffed and snatched her feet away, propping them on the coffee table.

He knew the answer, but the question fell out of his mouth anyway. “That was me, right?”

“What?" She followed his gaze to her shoulder. “Oh. _Psycho_ -you,” she clarified, with unmistakable affection. She lifted her head to catch his expression – he couldn’t tell what his face was doing, but the guilt always came through as nausea so he imagined he looked pretty green – and sighed explosively, rolling her eyes.

“What, I have to take the bruises  _and_  the brooding? Keep your sprinkles on, Donut; it lasted like 30 seconds. I’d have kicked your ass if my nails hadn’t been wet.”

He grinned in spite of himself. Lilly had been absently pointing and flexing her bare feet as she lectured him; now she stretched one farther than before and snagged a Sharpie between her toes.

“You were out for forever, though. If mommy dearest hadn’t been cooing over you the whole time, I could have given you a really great face tattoo.” She flicked the marker expertly backwards and caught it without sitting up, the picture of relaxation. “If you’re still feeling guilty,” she said, and lunged for him.

“ _Shit!”_  He shouted and tried to scoot away, getting tangled in the coffee table and cursing his reaction time. Maybe alcohol did kill brain cells. She was hampered by her dress but scrambling towards him, waving the marker and cackling. Escape unlikely, he tried to negotiate: “C’mon, Lil, that’s permanent, get a  _pen_ at least-”

“-just hold still, it’ll be an  _abstract_  dick, tasteful, I promise –“

“Lilly Kane!”

They both froze, as usual – it was like their mother’s voice could actually turn people to ice. Still propped on his elbows, Duncan glanced cautiously through the doorway, but she wasn’t even looking at them. Rummaging through her purse, wearing sunglasses, clearly on her way out: he relaxed a little. “You know you shouldn’t provoke your brother.”

Lilly’s whole face tightened, and the guilt twisted his stomach again. “Right.” She bit out, capping the marker and keeping her back to Celeste. “I provoke him.”  _Sorry,_  he mouthed at her, and could read her lips clearly:  _fuck off._

Celeste sighed. “I have an appointment, your father’s working, please try to behave like adults.” She glanced up to smile at Duncan and he smiled back weakly, automatic, apologetic. Lilly closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly, and then the door slammed and she threw the marker at his face.

“Feeling  _provoked_? Should I put some body armor on?” She was reaching for mockery, but her voice wavered.

He collapsed onto his back, hating all of them. “I’m  _sorry,_  Lil.”

“Yeah, that helps. Really changes things.”

“I should just check myself in somewhere.” It was the kind of thing he said in his mind so often, it took him a minute to realize it had left his mouth. But Lilly actually sat up for that, startled and - he didn't say it to distract her, but since it apparently had, he would take it. She leaned toward him, frowning.

“I swear to God _,_ Duncan.”

“You’re an atheist.”

“Shut up. I swear, if you do anything-”

“-I won’t  _do_ anything, Lil, I’m sor-“ she slammed her hand over his mouth and kept talking.

“-run away, go full prescription zombie, kill yourself – don’t give me that look, I know you think about it -  _anything_ that leaves me alone here with Ice Bitch and Afternoon Delight-“ Duncan sat up and jerked away at that, but she just followed him, “I will  _never forgive you_ , do you understand?”

It was stupid how often he had to remind himself that he was bigger than her, that he was the dangerous one in the family. But –

“Afternoon delight?” It came out high and muffled from under her hand and he instantly flushed.

Lilly actually hesitated, her head cocked to one side like she was deciding something. After a long minute she leaned away, only to yank off a couch cushion and toss it at his head, then skim her hand underneath the seat back.  _What the fuck?_ He pulled the cushion down just in time to get hit in the face with whatever else she’d found. Matches. 

"The Camelot," he read aloud, thinking for a second of swords in stones,before remembering dirty cinderblock and Dick Casablancas jokes and suddenly feeling cold. "Oh."

"They rent the rooms by the-"

"I get it, Lil."

"And unless you think  _Mom_ is-"

"I get it!"

"Look, if you're going to Hulk out, I need to change first. This dress, I will not forgive you for."

"Right. Cause I can just check the gamma radiation levels, and figure out when it'll happen," he muttered, and Lilly cringed.

"You're such a nerd, it  _hurts_ me." She tried to snatch the cushion back, but he was still hugging it, his hands digging into the sides. 

"Do you think it's," his voice cracked again and she didn’t even smirk, he couldn't believe she'd let that pass, it must be really bad, "someone we know?" 

"Donut..."

"Stop treating me like I'm five, Lil! I know there's no Easter Bunny, I know Mollydog didn't meet a wolf pack and run away with them, you can tell me who Dad was..." 

" _Fucking_ , Duncan, you're such a grownup, you can say it-"

"Just tell me!"

"I don't know!"

They stared at each other, and he wondered for a second if she was lying. Then she looked away, adding speculatively, “I don’t think he’s above the cliché, but his secretary’s a guy.”

“Sure that rules him out?” Duncan asked, relaxing. She really didn’t know anything, either.

Lilly looked reluctantly impressed. “Maybe you _are_ growing up. I never thought of that.” Suddenly she grinned. “The wolf thing was good, though, right? You drew pictures for weeks.”

He threw the cushion back and she scrambled away, snickering. “C’mon, Donut, let’s look up how to hotwire a car.”

“Isn’t there a valet key in the junk drawer? Mom probably forgot about it, we could just-“

“ _Boring_.”

He laughed and followed her, like always.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Haven Kimmel's novel Solace of Leaving Early, the line I always associate with Lilly and Duncan: "Because we're bound to lose our parents—we may even lose our children—but we should get to keep our siblings to the end."


End file.
